


Undiscovered

by leopion



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Azkaban, Compliancy: DH EWE?, Curses/Spells, Drama, F/M, Mild Profanity, Mystery, Psychological Trauma, post—hogwarts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leopion/pseuds/leopion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mysterious death. A challenging investigation. Some startling discoveries. Hermione Granger soon finds herself falling for the impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undiscovered

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
> 
>  **Alpha Readers:** arthicule, Fury me, and olgameisterfunk
> 
>  **Beta Readers:** dormiensa, Cortana Bennet, and mccargi
> 
> Well, my journey with this story is a rather long one, which unfortunately still hasn't finished, but I'll save you all the details. Essentially, the bunny was born in the later half of 2010. At the end of the same year/beginning of the next, there was a period of planning and drafting part of the story, but then for some reasons, I took a break and only came back to it recently. Due to my untimely break, my alpha readers were only able to share the journey with me during the earlier period. However, their valuable inputs on the outline and earlier part of the story have contributed greatly to shaping up the story as it is today. Of course, I should not forget the contribution of my three amazing betas as well. Thank you all so, so much!
> 
> Although the premise of this story is not a fun one, I promise that there will be plenty of hope in the end.

_To Margarita, who has inspired me to write this story and whose enjoyment I keep in mind during my writing process_

~~~*~~~

A deafening rumble of thunder jolted Hermione out of her sleep. She was vaguely aware of a distant voice shouting somewhere. Curling further into the comforting warmth of her blanket, she grumbled drowsily about the annoying thunderstorm and the delusion it usually caused to oneself.

‘Hermione!’ the familiar voice called again, louder this time; Hermione began to comprehend that perhaps she wasn’t imagining it after all. She tried to blink several times, straining to reactivate her drooping lids. On the bedside table, the luminous hands of her alarm clock were pointing at three-something.

‘Coming, Harry!’ she yelled in a sleepy voice, which she hoped would not be drowned out by the torrential rain lashing against her windows. Mentally counting to three, Hermione threw off the blanket, instantly being engulfed by the cool air and feeling much more awake. She barely had time to throw a cloak around herself before Harry shouted again, ‘Go to the lab and get ready, will you? Ernie and I will be there in an hour!’

‘Harry, wait!’ squeaked Hermione as she hastily skidded into the living room, cloak still dangling over one arm. But Harry was already gone, and with him went her first opportunity to apply the fruit of her research into practice. If Ernie still followed the usual scene inspection procedure, by the time they brought the cadavers back to her lab, the evidence—memories—at the scene might be messed up beyond her scope of examination. After all, it was not until yesterday that she was finally convinced that her spell was ready for field tests, hence the reason why Harry wasn’t aware of it yet. Actually, Hermione hadn’t told anyone of her success. Deep down she was still hoping that there wouldn’t be any chance to use it. At least not in this kind of situation.

Roughly ten minutes later found Hermione stepping out of the Floo into the Ministry’s Atrium, rather surprised at her own swiftness. It had been nearly three months since the last time Harry burst through her fireplace at such an ungodly hour. Chiding herself for being as naive as to believe that their ‘war’ was over, Hermione made her way across the hall. The whole place was still dark and deserted, given the hour; the only illumination was the great fountain in the centre, although already toned down to save energy.

The Ministry had been fully restored two years ago, yet peace would remain elusive so long as Death Eaters were still lurking out there. Granted, most people had started putting their lives back together and moving on. Harry, Ron, and herself, though: they had never really been given a chance to do so. Hermione’d once thought she’d had that chance. When she returned to Hogwarts to complete her education, it had seemed as though she was only one step away from her dream career of teaching and researching. However, the early results of her research during Year Eight had led her life down another path, working for the Technical Division of the Magical Law Enforcement Department. She would have turned down the offer had it not been for the despair that was starting to re-emerge from the fragile pieces of their barely-healed society. A year after Voldemort’s defeat, one would have expected the violence to cease, but reality had proven the opposite. It seemed as though the remaining Death Eaters were so shocked by the downfall of their master that they had stayed in hiding for a time, until their dark intentions rose once more. They were craving revenge. The murders were growing in number, and the least Hermione could do was to accept the job offer, knowing that her skills would be of some help in tracking down the criminals.

Her two best friends hadn’t fared much better, throwing themselves into Auror training right after the Second War. In fact, Ron had hardly been able to withstand the pressure and thus had jumped at the very first opportunity to transfer to a division in America. That left only Hermione and Harry, working rather closely with each other, which was somewhat of a comfort to them both. Nevertheless, she knew that sometimes even Harry felt tired and considered this more an onerous responsibility than the ideal job he’d always wished for.

Hermione sighed as she got into the lift and pressed the button to her floor almost mechanically. There was no point in complaining about what she could not change. Besides, after two years, she had grown, to some extent, accustomed to this job: from the erratic work hours to the arduous amounts of over-time. Then again, there were things that one never got used to. Death, for instance. It was an inevitable part of life, yet Hermione doubted that anybody could ever get used to it. To be fair, she supposed no more than a handful of people had even contemplated the idea. One thing she knew for sure: she got an unpleasant lump in her throat every time she set foot in this part of her office.

The Ministry post-mortem lab was a two-room installation located in a relatively secluded section of level two. Hermione drew her sensible robes closer to herself as she entered. Although she was kept warm in the sub-zero temperature of the room by an extremely powerful Warming Charm, Hermione still much preferred the natural cosiness of her research lab a few doors away. The chill of this place always went beyond a physical one.

Not wanting to waste another second, she shrugged off the uneasy feeling and quickly fetched her white cloak from the hanger next to the door. Then, turning to the cabinet nearby, Hermione pulled out a new pair of gloves and put them on as well. It was strictly required that all the items worn by a coroner should not be conjured by magic lest it contaminate the evidence.

Pulling aside the curtain that separated the so-called sitting area from the rest of the room, Hermione cast a quick look around to check its contents. Everything was exactly where she had left them three months ago, glaring back at her in their metal seamlessness. As this room merely served the purpose of preliminary examinations, the only significant piece of equipment was a solitary dissection table in the middle. There was also a hospital-type trolley next to it, three chairs in the corner of the sitting area, and of course the small cabinet from which she had just taken her gloves. Hermione's eyes involuntarily drifted over to the table. Less than one hour from now, her latest victim would be lying there, lifeless, waiting for examination. _Who was it this time_ , she wondered with a mixture of sadness and curiosity. The question had been preying on her mind since Harry’s wake-up call, but she quickly pushed it away to focus on the task at hand. Once assured that everything was in place, Hermione didn’t linger: most of the preparation still awaited her in the other room.

The second room contained what looked uncannily like a bizarre brass copy of an MRI scanner, and Hermione knew for a fact that it was modelled after one. The Comprehensive Examination Processor, CEP for short, was an invention of her co-worker Roger Davies. Joining the division one year prior to Hermione, Roger promptly realised the inefficiency of the existing procedure and, inspired by the Muggles’ MRI scanner, began to develop the machine. Hermione had been in complete awe when she first found out about it, especially at how a pureblood like Roger could have had such in-depth knowledge about Muggle medical equipments. That being said, the CEP was a significant advance for magical autopsy. Despite the substantial wand work still required to determine the procedure at the beginning, the device could perform a scan on its own. This was definitely better than the previous manual method where coroners had to carry out numerous spells for the inspection of each organ alone. The only downside to the machine was that results wouldn’t be available until the entire procedure was completed, which usually took at least half a day. That was why certain steps during the initial inspection remained non-automated.

Hermione started towards the main control screen, a glass-like surface attached to the CEP’s body. There was no board or buttons as magic would be transferred directly through the glass into the mechanism inside. She took out her wand and began to run its tip on the glass in a motion that she had always described as writing runes with her wand, muttering various incantations as she went. With each careful stroke, a similar runic symbol materialised on the body of the CEP, glowing with green fluorescent light. Lacking practice after three months of disuse, she started out slowly but then got faster as the skills gradually came back. By the time she finished her last stroke half an hour later, almost the whole surface of the CEP was glowing.

Hermione stepped back and surveyed her handiwork. She had turned on nearly all the available tests. Although each individual case required a different focus, generally it didn’t hurt to run a thorough examination. Besides, she could still make some alterations after knowing the specifics. Waiting until the information arrived to start programming would only protract the investigation, and in their war against the criminals, time was of the essence.

When Hermione finally walked back to the front room, however, she didn’t know whether she should feel glad for having finished her preparation ahead of time. Earlier in the CEP room, the need for concentration and precision had temporarily taken her mind off things. Now, as she sat here waiting for Harry, her anxieties instantly returned. Why did the Death Eaters suddenly strike after three dormant months? What had they been doing during those months? Had they formed a plan? Was this merely a single incident or the first part of something bigger? Question after question flooded her mind, but there was only one that kept recurring, knotting at her chest: Who was or—heavens forbid—who were victimised in tonight’s attack?

Ideally, to a professional, the identity of the victim shouldn’t matter. But this could not be further from the truth. Not when the most beloved people in her life were easily some of the Death Eaters’ most desired targets. Not when someone she just greeted yesterday at work could very well be the one murdered. The first time this had happened was three months into the job; Hermione had practically broken down in the middle of the autopsy. After that, more than once had Ministry employees fallen victim to the vindictive criminals, but thankfully, her worst fear had not yet occurred. She could only attribute it to the fact that perhaps they were not bold enough to directly mess with Harry Potter.

Nonetheless, it was difficult even with someone she had never seen nor heard of. Hermione’s job entailed much more than dealing with just the physical remains of the victims. In certain cases, she had to deal with their ghosts as well. The experience was vastly different from that of her Hogwarts years. Most of the ghosts residing in the castle, even Moaning Myrtle, had been dead for a long time and had already accepted it. By contrast, many of her new subjects still tried to deny that they were dead and insisted on following their normal routine for a while before finally acknowledging the fact. Once this had been settled, getting them to co-operate with the investigation also posed its own problems. Whereas some of the cases turned out to be the easiest ones she’d ever encountered, with the victims personally reporting the murderers, others proved much harder. More often than not, the ghosts refused to talk about the incidents. Moreover, with their souls still present, her department was obliged to get their consent to perform any post-mortem examinations, which they usually refused.

The hardest cases, however, were the ones who actually didn’t know that they were dead. They were often victims who had been murdered in their sleep. Sometimes their friends and colleagues didn’t have the heart to inform them of their own deaths and left it to the authorities. As there wasn’t any written rule about exactly which division should be responsible for such a sensitive matter, in the end, the difficult task fell to Hermione’s division, seeing that they were the ones who would need to ask for the permission later. It was simply heart-breaking to tell someone such horrible news.

It felt like hours until the door handle finally turned. Hermione stood up and made her way to the door at once, her eyes having been fixed on the spot the whole time. A moment later, Harry emerged from the corridor, a grave expression on his face. She peeked over Harry’s shoulder and caught a fleeting glimpse of white sheet. A single mass. At least it wasn’t a massacre.

But something was clearly amiss. Harry should have normally told her something by now. She returned her attention to him. Apart from the understandable weariness, he seemed in shock. Even though Harry had learnt to control his emotions fairly well throughout the years, it could not escape Hermione’s notice. Apprehension gripped at her chest. She had only seen him look like that when someone they knew was murdered. Yet, there was something different this time, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Heaving a sigh, Harry opened the door wider and stepped farther into the room to make way for the stretcher that had been floating behind him. Hermione followed suit.

Harry still hadn’t uttered a word, and she thought her chest could explode with the suspense.

‘What’s happened? Where’s Ernie?’

‘I told him to go fetch Roger,’ replied Harry as he levitated the stretcher onto the dissection table in the middle of the room. It vanished at the first contact with the table, leaving nothing but the covered body directly on top.

‘But that’s outrageous!’ exclaimed Hermione when she realised that Harry wasn’t going to elaborate. ‘Roger’s on his vacation. You don’t think I can handle the case alone?’

‘No, it’s not that I doubt your ability, but this case ...’ Harry paused, his brows furrowed as he seemed to struggle to find the right words. Hermione looked straight into his eyes, realisation dawning in her brown ones, but she waited patiently for Harry’s explanation. ‘I should have asked where the scene was before calling you. I’m sorry, Hermione.’

‘Is ... is it someone we know?’ she asked, her heart pounding. She could still be wrong, couldn’t she?

Harry didn’t answer; a perturbed expression crossed his face. Hermione’s fear mounted then rapidly turned into anger. What was Harry thinking? Did he really believe that he could keep it from her forever? If ... if any of their loved ones had ... then she had the right to know.

‘Who is it, Harry? Tell me! Who is it?’

Not waiting for his reply, she reached forwards to lift the cover. Harry set out to stop her, but it was too late. The evidence sheet had already slipped off the body. Hermione stopped dead in her tracks, hands still clutching the crumpled sheet. Before her eyes were the pale, pointed features of Draco Malfoy.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be more, so please don't kill me just yet. It would be lovely too if you could let me know what you think.
> 
> Leo


End file.
